Politics that are critical to our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness

The internet wins today. Hillary Clinton’s campaign website Hillaryclinton.com has published an article declaring that Pepe the frog, the world famous internet meme that debuted in 2005, is in fact a symbol for white supremacy. And of course Donald Trump and his ilk are using it to promote their racist agenda.

According to the article, white supremacists and the alt-right have “taken back” Pepe to spread their racism and hatred. This looks like a story that would be on The Onion, but it’s not, it’s on Hillary Clinton’s campaign website. The article itself even explains that over the years, Pepe the frog has evolved and been reinvented an innumerable amount of times. He can be used for just about anything and just put his face on it. This meme has been used most popularly as”FeelsBadMan” and “FeelsGoodMan” and everything in between. Yet the moment its used to mock Clinton’s comment about Trump supporters being deplorable, then that is the moment that Pepe the frog is no longer just a meme, but a symbol. A symbol for racism, bigotry and white supremacy. It’s a lot to assume and very hard to take seriously.

Let me point out a few obvious mistakes and failed fact checking by Clinton’s campaign:

“Pepe is a cartoon frog who began his internet life as an innocent meme”“They’ve decided to take back Pepe by adding swastikas and other symbols of anti-semitism and white supremacy.” — Saying something is “taken back” implies that it was once theirs to begin with. Pepe the frog was a cartoon frog that debuted on 4chan over 10 years ago. Yes, 4chan, the notorious “dank memeing” and troll inducing site. It was never a symbol of white supremacy until Clinton’s campaign ran off a story from the Daily Beast and claimed it was.

“But in recent months, Pepe’s been almost entirely co-opted by the white supremacists who call themselves the “alt-right.”” — So it’s only been in recent months that these supremacists have adopted him, so they aren’t taking him back, thank you for clearing that up.

Let’s focus on the “In recent months” again. They say it was in recent months but then try to prove that Trump is racist by posting a tweet from his account that is time stamped a year ago.

“We basically mixed Pepe in with Nazi propaganda, etc. We built that association,” one prominent white supremacist told the Daily Beast”. — One prominent white supremacist. Wow. So I went to find out who this PROMINENT white supremacist was… a twitter user by the name @JaredTSwift. If you look at the tweets from that account you will see their reaction to this nonsense.

So now you know, Pepe the frog is now the poster-meme for white supremacy. Everyone who has ever used it like Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj and well… THE ENTIRE INTERNET are racist, white supremacists.

It’s really surreal to realize that 4chan is having an impact on the presidential election in the United States of America. A simple, harmless, overused meme from 4chan. You can’t make this stuff up.

So the real question is: Is Hillary Clinton’s campaign really this ignorant and looking for every opportunity to call Trump a racist? or did 4chan and some satirical twitter users just troll the ever-living hell out of the Clinton campaign? I think the answer is both.